“The Black Widow Trainer” Book Review

The “Black Widow Trainer” is an erotic adventure novel written by Craig Odanovich. I received the book in .epub edition which allowed me to read it on my Sony e-Reader, but this book is also available in a print edition and Kindle edition. The book displayed just fine on the Sony e-Reader, and the book is 328 pages in length on my e-Reader. It took about four hours total to read the entire book, and the book is split into three parts.

Surprisingly, I was actually impressed by the plot. I was actually really surprised. This book ends up having a really creative plot. The main character, Misty, is a personal trainer who really enjoys what she does, and she keeps her body in great shape. After having an affair with a guy while on a trip, she and her husband choose to have an open marriage. After working at her local gym as a trainer for a couple months, a rich guy says he’d love to have her as a personal trainer with him on a business trip for three months; he says to come up with a contract – whatever she wants.

She is half-joking when she requests large amounts of payment, and the final stipulation: That her client is allowed to have sex with her once, but after they have sex with her, she is allowed to take the money from the entire job and leave. However, her client readily agrees, and she finds herself nicknamed as the “Black Widow Trainer” as this first arrangement leads her to make a career out of this. In fact, she’s away from home more often than at her home, and this book just basically follows Misty as she continues on her adventures with different clients.

The author does a great job of including the sex as well. While other books may “fade to black”, you’ll get to experience the sex scenes in the book. There aren’t very many sex scenes, though, and I wouldn’t consider this much of erotica. The sex scenes are there, but at the same time, a lot of them use flowery language like “his hot rod” that never seemed all that arousing. It’s neat to see Misty’s “last time” with her clients though.

Along the way, some of Misty’s clients will include a “captain” with a prothetic arm, a secret agent, and a woman.

One of the biggest problems with this book is that I was never able to relate to Misty. Not once. I don’t think a single negative thing was sad about Misty throughout the entire book. All of the characters in the book lust after Misty’s body, and since it’s told in third person, all of this is obvious to the reader. Misty runs around in skimpy clothing, and not once did the character seem to mess up or anything. I just couldn’t relate to Misty’s character. One of the thing that makes a character endearing is learning to love them through their flaws and being able to relate, but when you have a character that is pretty much perfect, there’s not much to want to really relate to.

Along that line, another problem with this story was the character development. I went through 300 pages with these characters and came out at the end feeling like I knew just as little about them as when I started. Yes, I had experienced Misty’s adventures, but I didn’t feel like I knew her any better than when I started. The book never hooked me into wanting to read more of it, and I was easily able to put it down to do other things. Along with this (and I understand it’s a series, so I wasn’t expecting too much), there was no climax of the book. Misty just basically has a run in with a bad client. That’s about the worst “problem” that happens in the book. I know they wanted to leave it open for further books, and you never want to get into the “Harry Potter Problem” (making each “problem” ridiculously epic), but at the same time, there was’t anything to hook me into seeing a character face any sort of adversity.

The writing itself was a bit of a problem too. It could just be my personal preference, but the writing seemed really choppy to me in places. The descriptions were worded really nicely, but the dialogue is usually where I felt like I was definitely reading a book. At times, I didn’t even think the conversation sounded like something two people would say. (Understandably, though. I can’t honestly say that I’d be able to write realistic dialogue.) The sentence structure ends up being a bit cliched at points, but the wording does get the point across, so you’ll still be able to read the story just fine. The book was spell-checked and proofread nicely with very little errors.

My final opinion? The book has an amazing idea in mind, and I was expecting quite a bit from the book. This is probably why, ultimately, I found myself pretty disappointed by the book. The main character seemed flawless which meant I had no real attachment to her, and the story never really seemed to have any ups or downs. It just was. I recommend checking out the premise of the story and reading the first sample chapter before deciding on whether this is the book for you. I would, however, read the next book in the series when it comes out, but I wouldn’t ever come back to re-read this first book. The plot makes this worth the read if you have time, but this is a book I’d check-out from a library instead of purchasing. Thanks to Emerald Book Company for sending me a copy of The Black Widow Trainer for review.﻿